Max. number of images in a LR3 catalog / moving the catolog to an other drive

[jsch]

Hi,

now I have ~20.000 images in my LR3 catalog. Most of the images have between 16 and 30 megapixels - some scanned 8x10 negatives have 400 megapixels. Is this a good time to think about a new catalog? I would like to stay with one catalog.

Is there a good description how to move the catalog file to a different drive without loosing something?

Thank you,
Johannes

[john beardsworth]

20000 is nothing! And the size of the individual picture files shouldn't affect your decision either. I have busy clients with over 300000 images in single catalogues, and know of others with twice that number. While there are some reasons for multiple catalogues, here all you would be doing is fragmenting control of your pictures. Read more here.

Make sure you optimise your catalogue. I do it weekly.

Moving to another drive is not difficult (a fast internal drive is best). The lrcat file is crucial, and you can just move it with Explorer/Finder. You may want to move the previews.lrdata file too - but if you don't move it Lightroom will simply have to create a new one. Then just double click the lrcat file in its new location.


John

[Jim Pascoe]

Hi Johann

John just beat me to it!  My main catalogue has 117,000 images in with no problem, and over half of them are derived from files of 25mp or so.  I just have separate catalogues for personal work and clients work.

Jim

[john beardsworth]

And one other thing - just make sure you back up that lrcat file properly.

John

[Schewe]

Is there a good description how to move the catalog file to a different drive without loosing something?

The only additional comment I would make is to make sure your folders and files on the drive are well organized. I highly suggest that people put all their images in an enclosing folder and to make sure that enclosing folder is visible in Lightroom. If the enclosing folder is NOT currently visible, right click (or control click) on one of the sbufolders and choose Add Parent Folder. This will allow you to do operations on that top level folder such as a sync or updating the folder location. If you need to move that top level folder to a different drive, it's easy to simply copy the entire folder structure to a new drive and tell Lightroom to point to that new drive using the Update Folder Location command.

[henk]

 If you need to move that top level folder to a different drive, it's easy to simply copy the entire folder structure to a new drive and tell Lightroom to point to that new drive using the Update Folder Location command.
[/quote]

Or just move that folder, within LR, to the other drive which should be visible in LR.
In that way I have a "work drive" on which I have my current projects and several off-line drives with the other 75.000 images.
In this way I can see all my 120.000 + images.
Once a week I use "Sync back pro" for syncing with the back-up drive. Once every 4 weeks I sync all drives with the external ( off premisses)  drives.

Henk

[madphoto]

Hi Johannes,

You will find this link very useful on how to move your LR catalogue.



Cheers Michael